Take a look at the video that the Continental Country Club HOA had made. With amenities such as pools, fitness center, restaurants, tennis courts, and of course a 18 hole golf course this neighborhood has something for everyone. Located on the East side of town, close to parks, trails, shopping and restaurants. You can learn more about the Continental Country club here.

If you are interested in viewing property or have any questions give us a call us @ 928-714-0001 or email us at info@bestflagstaffhomes.com

A Stage 1 Fire Restriction has been placed in the City of Flagstaff. This includes a ban on all fire pits and other open flame devises in the area. Charcoal grills and other devices with an ON-OFF switch are still permitted in most areas. No charcoals or wood fueled grills are allowed at Thorpe, McPhearson, McMillan or Buffalo Parks. Smoking is also banned on all FUTS trails and Disc Golf Courses, at Buffalo Park, Thorpe Park, Mcphearson Park, McMillan Mesa Park, Observatory Mesa and Picture Canyon Natural Area. Consumer grade fireworks within the city are prohibited. Please visit the city website for updates on fire restrictions at http://www.flagstaff.az.gov.

The Flagstaff Elite Team is proud to be members of a great networking group, Flagstaff Business Connections (FBC). FBC is a group of local business owners and professionals that meets weekly to share best businesses practices and assist in tackling small business challenges. This has proven to be a great way for each member to increase his/her business as well as become a greater presence in our community.

The group was established in 2012. We have a wide group of professions represented in our group including a plumber, pediatric dentist, landscaper, furniture store owner and much more. We all feel we receive a great value from our group. As a group we are continuously trying to keep up to date on what is happening in our community also. We strive to be knowledgeable leaders in Northern Arizona. We do this by having guest speakers and touring different organizations. Over the past couple of months we have had a Flagstaff city council member in, we have toured the Flagstaff Boys and Girls Club and had a leader at Arizona Snowbowl let us know of upcoming improvements.

Another great benefit is that we have amazing people and businesses to refer to our clients and friends. We know that when we are referring a member of our group they will be providing amazing customer service and the person we referred will be satisfied. Take a look at our members.

We are always looking for new members to join our group. We do have specific criteria to become a member, and we only allow one member from each profession. To get more information about our group or becoming a member please see our website at FlagstaffBC.com.

Come to Ardrey Auditorium this Friday for the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra’s Music of Disney Concert, featuring symphonic versions of The Little Mermaid, Frozen, The Lion King, and more! The event is sponsored by Northern Arizona Healthcare, and attendees are highly encouraged to wear Disney costumes. Visit Magical Music of Disney for more information.

Halloween at Lowell Observatory

Who says science can’t be fun? Lowell Observatory is hosting various fun activities and tours on the 30th and 31st. . .All guests wearing a science-themed Halloween costume gets free admission! Visit Lowell.edu for event times and program details.

Greensky Bluegrass Concert

Greensky Bluegrass uses all traditional Bluegrass instruments, from dobro, banjo, mandolin, upright bass, and guitar, but put their own unique twist on musical tradition. With releasing their hit EP Handguns, the band has gone on to win the prestigious Telluride Bluegrass Festival’s Band Competition in 2006, and have attended various music festivals over the years.

Now, Greensky Bluegrass band is having a concert tonight at the Orpheum Theatre, and as a bonus the group is giving away half of the Handguns album for free. Visit Orpheum Theater to purchase tickets!

LOL Comedy Night with Shadows Foundation

Tomorrow the Shadows Foundation is hosting a LOL Comedy Night at the Museum Club featuring Brian Kohatsu and Armon Williams. Admission is $10, with proceeds going towards the Shadows Foundation’s mission of helping local families and individuals dealing with life-threatening illnesses. Visit Shadows Foundation for more information!

City of Flagstaff Halloween Harvest Festival

This Saturday the City of Flagstaff Recreation Services is hosting a fun-filled event that is safe and lighthearted for the whole family! The program starts at 4:00pm on Heritage Square and features a pumpkin patch, spooky music, games, as well as various fall arts and crafts. All children’s activities are free, and there will be a ‘ Downtown Trick or Treat Trail’ for little ones to collect candy on. Learn more at Flagstaff 365.

Halloween does not scare us away from selling homes. While inventory in Flagstaff below $450,000 is a bit frightful, Jessica and Eric are here to help. They will help take the “fear” out of buying or selling your next home. Here is an interesting Haunted House article talking about some interesting experiences REALTORS across the country have encountered. Hope you enjoy!

This Thursday, the Greater Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce invites you to a ‘Casablanca’ style fundraiser! The event takes place in the Hanger at Wiseman Aviation (at the Flagstaff Airpark). The evening will feature live music, casino tables, a silent auction, red carpet experience, and delicious food from Buster’s, Karma Sushi, Taverna, Pita Jungle, Tinderbox Kitchen, and others.

Take a Halloween walk through garden paths lit by Jack’ O Lanterns, enter your design in a pumpkin art carving contest, and enjoy cookies with hot cider by the light of a bonfire! This Saturday is the Flagstaff Arboretum’s Annual Pumpkin Walk. For more information, visit Flagstaff 365.

NAU Homecoming

Celebrate Northern Arizona University this Saturday! This year’s Homecoming starts off with a Flannels and Flapjacks Breakfast, includes a homecoming parade in the afternoon, and a tailgating and Lumberjack family fun fest just before the Lumberjack football team faces off against Weber State at 4 pm. Visit NAU Homecoming for more details!

Wanderlust Sourfest

Come taste Northern Arizona’s best craft beers at the Wanderlust Sourfest, presented by Wanderlust Brewing Company. This festival is the first in Flagstaff to feature sour craft beers, and proceeds from the event will go towards helping the Arizona Trail Association. Visit Wanderlust Sour Fest.

Fall Festival of Choirs

Featuring performances by the NAU Choirs, Men’s Chorale, Women’s Chorale, Shrine of the Ages Choire, and more, singers and choir fans won’t want to miss this concert! The event takes place at the Ardrey Auditorium on the NAU Campus. Go to Fall Festival of Choirs for more information!

RE/MAX Peak Properties would love your vote for Best Real Estate Agency for 2015. Please take a few moments to cast your vote at 2015 Best of Flag and while you are there take a look at all the great companies in Flagstaff supporting our community.

Flagstaff’s pinecone drop is unique, but many other communities celebrate their uniqueness in similar fashion

Flagstaff’s unique version of Times Square on New Year’s Eve is set to go at the Weatherford Hotel in downtown Flagstaff. Flagstaff’s twinkling; 6-foot pine cone is in place, to be lowered at the stroke of midnight. (There will also be an early drop at 10:00 p.m. for families who’d like to get home early.) The Pine Cone Drop from the Weatherford has been a Flagstaff tradition since 1998.

Lowering a pine cone is not so odd when you think about Flagstaff’s spectacular, surrounding ponderosa pine forest. But what’s become our tradition has become a tradition in other towns across the land as well, with an assortment of strange and not-so-strange icons, dropped to celebrate the New Year.

Of course there’s the traditional 12-foot diameter, multi-colored Waterford Crystal ball, dropped in New York City. A lighted ball has been dropped in Times Square since 1907, the first adorned with 100, 25-watt bulbs.

But how about the “traditional” 20-foot, 600-pound walleye, named Captain Wylie Walleye, in Port Clinton, Ohio? (Walleye is a game fish that puts Port Clinton on the map on the shore of Lake Erie – a boon to the local economy – as “Walleye Capital of the World.”) Thousands have braved the cold in Port Clinton to cheer the celebrated fish for the past 16 years.

In eastern Arizona, they drop a deuce of clubs at midnight in Show Low, a practice just started to welcome 2012. According to legend, the origin of the town’s name is derived from a game of poker where the winner showed a deuce of clubs, the lowest card in the deck.

In tiny Dillsburg, Pennsylvania, what else would you drop but a dill pickle, positioned to drop into a barrel. It’s not just any dill pickle. “Mr. Pickle” is 8 feet tall and wears a bow tie and top hat.

Not too far away in Hershey, Pennsylvania, they drop a giant, foil-wrapped Hershey Kiss at midnight.

In Atlanta, at what’s billed as the largest New Year’s Eve celebration in the Southeast, the Atlanta Peach Drop draws upwards of 100,000 people.

In Easton, Maryland, famous for delicious blue crabs, a giant paper mache crab is lowered.

In other locales across the land you might see a sardine, a sausage, a possum, a stuffed goat, a ukulele, smashing watermelons, or a Crayola crayon. Something of what I am sure is but a partial list of objects dropped or celebrated on New Year’s Eve across the country can be found on Wikipedia – List of objects dropped on New Year’s Eve.

Wherever you are at the stroke of midnight, enjoy a happy and safe New Year’s Eve and a wonderful and prosperous 2015!

Head downtown tomorrow night, December 31st, as once again the countdown to the New Year in Flagstaff will be headquartered at the Weatherford Hotel. The intersection of Leroux and Aspen has become Flagstaff’s “Times Square.” The spectacular, twinkling, 6-foot pine cone is in place, to be lowered at the stroke of midnight to usher in 2014. (Also dropped at 10:00 p.m., coinciding with the New Year celebration in New York City, for families who’d like to get home early.)

Some thoughts on Flagstaff neighborhoods this season

It’s often said that the three most important factors in real estate are: Location, location, and location. One of the cardinal rules of real estate sales is to “know your product.” Put those together and it’s apparent that when you’re buying a Flagstaff home you’ll want an agent who knows Flagstaff.

Because of my years selling Flagstaff real estate, I can honestly say that I know the neighborhoods around town “just like my own.” The rest of the Elite Team at RE/MAX Peak Properties is just as knowledgeable — Eric Davis and Jessica Garard are both Flagstaff natives and have been selling Flagstaff real estate for years.

If you were interested in the Coconino Estates neighborhood, you might like to know that this time of year, the neighbors place luminaria and that folks from all over town gather to walk the neighborhood and enjoy the lights. If you like to snowshoe through the pines, you’ll want to know which Flagstaff neighborhoods have quick and easy access to forest trails. If you’re a skier, you’ll want to be close to routes to the Arizona Snowbowl and Flagstaff Nordic Center.

Monsoon not done yet

Newly-established creek front property in Flagstaff

Flagstaff summers are usually gentle things with a little excitement thrown in on some days by early afternoon thunderstorms. Those storms typically clear by late afternoon to create beautiful sunsets. Not this year!

In July, Flagstaff had as much rain as it usually does in an entire 3-month monsoon season (July-September 15) and the overcast days have abounded. The rain kept coming in August and now into September with just a few days break here and there.

We’ve had flooding in places we’ve not seen flooding in decades. In the 18 years I’ve lived in Flagstaff, I’ve seen about 18 mosquitos, and 16 of them have been this year.

All of this creates some new real estate issues, just to keep my professional life interesting. But, right about now I’d just like to see some sunshine…. Hmmm, here comes a little.

The new project, also aimed at NAU students, will be developed by the same company that built 10, four-story buildings designed to house 562 students last year

Apartment construction at Aspen Place in Flagstaff – photo by Jake Bacon

The Arizona Daily Sun reported this morning that by the end of the year, there will be 54 new apartment-style townhomes in the shadow of the massive student housing complex known as The Grove at Flagstaff. Since the student population of Northern Arizona University has exploded in the last few years, there is a need for more housing. Still, with second home buyers still scare in a slowly recovering real estate market, this means more pressure on the already depressed prices of existing condos that were made available by apartment conversions in west Flagstaff a few years ago. Even the Riordan Ranch condos, built in the 1980s and ever popular with students because of their proximity to central campus, have not been able to hold their value in recent years.

Rents remain high, so now may be the time for long-term investors to jump in — if they haven’t already made the jump.

The Museum of Northern Arizona is one of Flagstaff’s treasures and the “Gateway to the Colorado Plateau”

Founded in 1928 as a community effort by a group of Flagstaff citizens, the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) is a private, nonprofit institution that was originally established as a repository for Native American artifacts and natural history specimens from the Colorado Plateau. The original founders, zoologist Dr. Harold S. Colton and artist Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton, were dedicated to preserving the history and cultures of northern Arizona.

The museum’s mission is “to inspire a sense of love and responsibility for the beauty and diversity of the Colorado Plateau through collecting, studying, interpreting, and preserving the region’s natural and cultural heritage.”

Visitors to the museum can see wonderful, interpretive displays of the geological, biological and biotic history of the region. An assortment of fossil fish and sharks, as well as a variety of invertebrates and plants, along with a plesiosaur skeleton, are all on display, many in a hands-on way. The formation of the San Francisco Peaks and the entire Colorado plateau region are depicted in models and interactive audio-visual installations.

MNA holds an extensive collection of Native American artifacts, natural science specimens and fine art pieces. Casual visitors get a look at a broad interpretation of these in various galleries, however more than five million artifacts are held in repositories on a 200-acre campus dedicated to research and preservation. Among more than 40 buildings on the campus, the Easton Collection Center was dedicated in 2009, a 17,000 square foot building dedicated to housing collection objects in the best possible environment for preservation.

MNA actively conducts research across the Colorado Plateau region in the fields of anthropology, biology, fine art, geology and paleontology, and Native cultures.

The Museum of Northern Arizona is located at 3101 N. Fort Valley Road in Flagstaff, and is open year-round. (928) 774-5213.